Laminitis Research Benefactors John K. and Marianne Castle Will Be Honored by American Association of Equine Practitioners

posted by Fran Jurga | 24 November 2008 | www.hoofcare.blogspot.com
based on information from the American Association of Equine Practitioners (AAEP)

John Castle posed with his Appaloosa horse Spot as the horse suffered tragically from laminitis. The mystery of the disease led Mr. and Mrs. Castle to become leaders in encouraging and funding research and new treatments for laminitis. (photo courtesy of John K. Castle)

Philanthropists John K. and Marianne Castle are the 2008 recipients of the American Association of Equine Practitioners’ George Stubbs Award, an honor that recognizes contributions made to equine veterinary medicine by individuals other than veterinarians. The AAEP will present the award on December 9 during the association’s 54th Annual Convention in San Diego, California.

Laminitis had a devastating effect on the Castle family when their beloved Appaloosa, Spot, began to suffer recurrent bouts of laminitis and crippling chronic founder. Mr. and Mrs. Castle worked with a team of respected AAEP members, led by Dr. James Orsini, and then-farrier Rob Sigafoos at the University of Pennsylvania’s New Bolton Center to test innovative treatment techniques while maintaining Spot’s quality of life. Their total dedication to the quality of life of their horse led the treatment team at the New Bolton Center to new levels of inspired care.

In 2007, Mr. and Mrs. Castle announced a gift of $1 million to support the establishment of the Laminitis Institute, an international laminitis research initiative at the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Veterinary Medicine.

Mr. and Mrs. Castle are well-known to many readers of Hoofcare and Lameness Journal and have forged a lasting bond with the farrier/vet community around the world through their sponsorship of the International Equine Conference on Laminitis and Diseases of the Foot, held bi-annually in West Palm Beach, Florida. They play an active role in the scientific, practical and social aspects of the popular conference.

In honor of their contributions to equine medicine, the third edition of the Dr. Tom Divers and Dr. Jim Orsini book, Equine Emergencies: Treatment and Procedures, is dedicated to the Castles.

Mr. and Mrs. Castle will travel from their home in New York to receive the AAEP award and, no doubt, share their enthusiasm for the ongoing campaign to resolve the mystery of the disease that affected their beloved horse and continues to challenge researchers, practitioners, farrier, trainers and owners.

About the award: The Stubbs Award is named for George Stubbs (1724 – 1806), the artist and teacher who played a vital role in veterinary education. His reference book, Anatomy of the Horse, published more than 200 years ago, is still universally recognized as an authoritative equine anatomical depiction.

John K. and Marianne Castle are friendly and enthusiastic supporters of professionals involved in laminitis research and treatment. (Fran Jurga photo)

© Fran Jurga and Hoofcare Publishing. No use without permission.

Fran Jurga's Hoof Blog is a between-issues news service for subscribers to Hoofcare and Lameness Journal. This blog may be read online at the blog page, checked via RSS feed, or received via a digest-type email (requires signup in box at top right of blog page).

To subscribe to Hoofcare and Lameness (the journal), please visit the main site, www.hoofcare.com, where many educational products and media related to equine lameness and hoof science can be found.

Questions or problems with this blog? Send email to blog@hoofcare.com.

David Gulley Will Preside over European Farriers

Posted by Fran Jurga | 23 November 2008 | www.hoofcare.blogspot.com


(Edited from official press release)

British farrier David Gulley, FWCF has been elected President of the European Federation of Farriers Associations (EFFA). The appointment was made at EFFA’s Annual General Meeting in Saumur, France on 15 November, and is for a period of two years.

David Gulley’s appointment recognizes his many years experience as a farrier, both in the British Army and in civilian life, his contributions to training apprentices, to competing and to judging competitions, and to supporting the work of the National Association of Farriers, Blacksmiths and Agricultural Engineers. He lives near Melton Mowbray, in the foxhunting countryside of Leicestershire and has visited the United States frequently in the past, to compete and give clinics.

David is a Fellow of the Worshipful Company of Farriers, the highest professional achievement level honor in the British farriery system, and perhaps the most difficult credential in the farrier world to obtain.

David was delighted with his election to this prestigious and influential position, and has made clear his determination to carry forward and to publicize EFFA’s work in raising standards of farriery throughout Europe.

About EFFA: The mission of EFFA is to improve the welfare of the horse by encouraging the highest standards of trimming and shoeing. It has produced agreed standards of basic competence in farriery, and has started a process of accrediting the training and examination systems in member nations against these standards. Farriers who are recognized as meeting these standards will be entitled to call themselves Certified Euro-Farriers.

In addition, EFFA organizes a European Farriery Championship every two years, and in alternate years arranges an educational event for farriery students and teachers.

Membership of EFFA is open to all farriery associations in all European nations, whether they are members of the EU or not. Current member nations are: Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Germany, France, Austria, Norway, Switzerland, Great Britain, Iceland, Ireland, Holland, Spain, Hungary and the Czech Republic.

To learn more, visit www.eurofarrier.org/

© Fran Jurga and Hoofcare Publishing. No use without permission. Permissions for use elsewhere are mostoften easily arranged. Fran Jurga's Hoof Blog is a between-issues news service for subscribers to Hoofcare and Lameness Journal. This blog may be read online at the blog page, checked via RSS feed, or received via a digest-type email (requires signup in box at top right of blog page). To subscribe to Hoofcare and Lameness (the journal), please visit the main site, www.hoofcare.com, where many educational products and media related to equine lameness and hoof science can be found. Questions or problems with this blog? Send email to blog@hoofcare.com.

Keep Going, Knowhere: Jump Champion Still Winning on Bionic Tendon

by Fran Jurga | 21 November 2008 | www.hoofcare.blogspot.com

Image by &ndie/courtesy of Flickr

News comes and go. Horses come and go. Every once in a while a story or a horse comes back into the headlines and you say, "I'll be darned..."

Last winter we reported on the jubilation of the veterinary community over the success of the jump racer Knowhere, who came back from tendon surgery to excel again at this most grueling of tests for a front tendon. Knowhere kept running, kept jumping and often, kept winning. I lost track of him after he fell at a fence in the Cheltenham Gold Cup last March, and thought he'd been retired.

But another racing season has just begun in England and a few weeks ago, Knowhere launched into his 2008 campaign...as a ten-year-old. He came home first in the Old Roan Chase at Aintree, near Liverpool, five years after bowing and having stem cells from his sternum inserted into the bulging superficial flexor tendon of his right front leg.

The technique used for Knowhere, called VetCell, is different from the normal fat-derived stem cell treatment.

Click here to go back and read about Knowhere's treatment and all the people who will be cheering for him next Saturday in the Hennessy Gold Cup. His tendon will have to hold up over a distance of 3 miles, 2 and a half furlongs and carry him over 21 fences. The race is the oldest commercially sponsored sporting event in Europe, and Knowhere, who is trained by Nigel Twiston-Davies and ridden by Paddy Brennan, will face 53 others if they all are fit to run.

There may be plenty of horses racing with bionic parts!


© Fran Jurga and Hoofcare Publishing.

Fran Jurga's Hoof Blog is a between-issues news service for subscribers to Hoofcare and Lameness Journal. This blog may be read online at the blog page, checked via RSS feed, or received via a digest-type email (requires signup in box at top right of blog page).

To subscribe to Hoofcare and Lameness (the journal), please visit the main site, www.hoofcare.com, where many educational products and media related to equine lameness and hoof science can be found.

Questions or problems with this blog? Send email to blog@hoofcare.com.

Dynamic Foot Balance: Toe First vs Heel First Landing

Posted by Fran Jurga | 19 November 2008 | www.hoofcare.blogspot.com

Or, "the qualitative effect of addition and subtraction of a wedge heel on dynamic landing pattern at the trot (up)...."

I saw this photo in Horse and Hound and had a good laugh. There was no caption, no explanation of whose leg and shoe that was. Intrigued, I ripped out the photo and let it flutter around on my dashboard for a few days while I drove to a conference. I laughed every time I saw it.

Finally, today, I found out the rest of the story. It's a about a woman named Claire...who can't stride out at all.

Claire Lomas is a ****event rider who was badly injured in a fall. She injured her spine (in addition to just about everything else) and, as she so understatedly says, "can't walk, at the mo".

But her friends still can. One of the riders at Weston Park horse trials last month hatched a plan to turn the trot-up and vet inspection into a mini-fundraiser to help Claire with her medical bills. Everyone chipped in to egg him (yes, him) on and his plan became more and more outrageous. As did his hair and his outfit...and, finally, his shoes.

When the time came, the fellow literally did have to trot his horse, which meant he had to run in five-inch Lucite high heels. Luckily Martha from Equestrian Services Thorney was on hand to capture it with her camera.

This guy's still raking it in and the photo of his best-shod foot is traveling around the world, thanks to Horse and Hound and the Hoof Blog. A donation from the Hoof Blog was made today through Martha to the Claire Lomas Fund so that we could make you laugh this morning.

Read more about Claire and her plans to walk again at www.get-claire-walking.co.uk.

© Fran Jurga and Hoofcare Publishing. No use without permission. If you would like to use the photo, I am sure that Martha at EST would arrange a donation to Claire's fund for you, too.

Fran Jurga's Hoof Blog is a between-issues news service for subscribers to Hoofcare and Lameness Journal. This blog may be read online at the blog page, checked via RSS feed, or received via a digest-type email (requires signup in box at top right of blog page).

To subscribe to Hoofcare and Lameness (the journal), please visit the main site, www.hoofcare.com, where many educational products and media related to equine lameness and hoof science can be found.

Questions or problems with this blog? Send email to blog@hoofcare.com.

Book Announcement: "Leg and Hoof Care for Horses" Sorts Out Lameness for Horse Owners

Leg and Hoof Care for Horses: A Complete Illustrated Guide
by Micaela Myers with photographs by Kelly Meadows
256 pages, 450 color photos, soft cover, November 2008

Hot off the presses this week is "Leg and Hoof Care for Horses" by Micaela Myers, former editorial staffer at Bowtie Press in California. Micaela has done a great job of compiling information about almost every imaginable disorder of a horse's hoof or leg.

Maybe readers of Hoofare and Lameness Journal and this Hoof Blog don't think they need this book, but most horse owners surely do. The reason? We have lots and lots of books on the foot and on lameness that explain every disorder and treatment but this book takes the novel approach of spreading information and photos about each problem over two pages, showing the problem in nice color photos and adding colorful boxes with notes.

This means that if an owner or junior rider or a parent needs to understand what stem cell therapy for a tendon injury is, or what ringbone is, they can just open up the book and voila! there it is. No looking things up in three different chapters. No footnotes. And there's that aha! moment of "Oh my gosh, that is just what Moose's leg looks like!"

Never underestimate the value of the simple approach. Or big, colorful photos.

As I flipped through this book, I was reminded of a quote I read earlier today, something to the effect of "If you can't explain your subject in a few simple words, then you probably don't really understand it yourself."

Also on the plus side, Micaela Myers dances like a prima ballerina around the subject of whether horses should be shod or not. Like everything else in the book, it gets two pages. She does differentiate between normal and therapeutic shoes, and she does include photos of Natural Balance and AANHCP (Jaime Jackson) trims, and discusses Strasser hoofcare briefly.

On the down side, the book is inconsistent in the quality of photos and their labeling. Many photos are nicely enhanced with arrows and callout text, not always pointing to the right thing. Some photos would only confuse an owner, such as a photo showing the bottom of a foot with a bar shoe and pad to illustrate a keratoma.

The book really shines in the veterinary sections more than the hoof sections. The radiographs are big and sharp. The section on how to sweat a leg with DMSO and plastic wrap could help a lot of people stay out of trouble; seeing the sweat section next to the poultice section helps people understand the difference between these two leg wrapping treatments.

The feet in the photos are pretty average, and the shod ones are not wearing notable, fashionable or even clipped shoes, usually. They appear to be normal horses of the Quarter horse persuasion, which is pretty much what most American horses would look like. There is virtually nothing on racing or even sport- or breed-specific problems.

We live in an age where few people are going to sit down and read a book unless they have to. For a book to earn its place on a shelf, it has to be a tool with a specific job to do. Micaela Myers has given us a book that can point you to a photo and detailed explanation of an annular ligament injury or a capped elbow in five seconds or less.

The other great quality of this book is its price: just $25. It's a great price for such a thick, colorful book. It's a nice bright package, but we all know better than to judge a book by its cover. Use this book as an asset to keep next to your more serious, in-depth library of lameness books. Don't loan out those icons--Denoix, Pollitt, Van Nassau, Clayton, Dyson--but offer Myers instead. Be generous: It's a book anyone can understand, navigate, appreciate...and afford to replace.

Ordering details: $25 plus $6 post in USA, plus $15 air post to other countries. Pay in US dollars. Visa/Mastercard accepted. Allow a few weeks for delivery. Available 18 November 2008. Mail orders to Hoofcare, 19 Harbor Loop, Gloucester MA 01930. Telephone orders to (01) 978 281 3222 (leave details on voice mail); fax orders to (01) 978 283 8775. Click here for fax/mail order form. Email orders to books@hoofcare.com.

© Fran Jurga and Hoofcare Publishing. No use without permission.

Fran Jurga's Hoof Blog is a between-issues news service for subscribers to Hoofcare and Lameness Journal. This blog may be read online at the blog page, checked via RSS feed, or received via a digest-type email (requires signup in box at top right of blog page).

To subscribe to Hoofcare and Lameness (the journal), please visit the main site, www.hoofcare.com, where many educational products and media related to equine lameness and hoof science can be found.

Questions or problems with this blog? Send email to blog@hoofcare.com.

British Government: "Barefoot Trimmer" Doesn't Describe the Job

by Fran Jurga | 18 November 2008 | www.hoofcare.blogspot.com

The results are in and analyzed from a government-run, nationwide survey of the job practices and educational training of Great Britain's barefoot hoof practitioners. Please note that the results of this survey apply only to hoof trimmers residing in Great Britain.

Among the conclusions drawn by the government agency "Lantra" is that "barefoot trimmer" isn't a good title and is not accurate in describing the services provided.

Lisa Jarvis, Lantra's Industry Parnership Manager for Professions Allied to Veterinary Science (PAVS), said in a press release that the public may be confused about the scope of services provided by a barefoot trimmer, as would a veterinarian seeking to work with a trimmer on the case, according to Jarvis.

Jarvis plans to work with trimmers to come up with a better job title. "Equine podiatrist" was a descriptive term mostoften used by the trimmers to describe themselves.

The statistics gained from the study are fascinating. For instance
· 65% of respondents were female
· Over half were aged 35-44, 21% aged 45-54
· 100% white ethnic background
• 71% were working as trimmers after leaving another career
• More than half had less than three years of experience; only 7% had been working as trimmers for more than six years.
• 89% stated that they believed they held a relevant qualification to do their jobs.

As with all surveys, the results compile responses from those who responded, and little is known about those who did not respond.

Things get interesting when the trimmers were asked what they did on the job. Trimming feet and assessing environment, soundness, gait analysis, structure and function of hooves, hoof health, and diet/nutrition were listed as job activities by 95% of those surveyed.

A similar survey of equine dental technicians found that that field, too, is populated by second-career choosers.

The conclusion of the study is that the government should develop standards for both trimmers and equine dental technicians "to allow clear identification of the practical skills and underpinning knowledge required to undertake these roles professionally...other professional and regulatory bodies for veterinary science and farriery should be consulted and involved with the development process".

Great Britain is home to an estimated 500 people who are believed to be earning a living by trimming horses' hooves.

It's interesting to note that a functional "map" of the farrier profession in Great Britain compiled in 2006 points out the pressures of changing technology in farriery and the need for more training in that area but does not mention the popularity of barefoot trimming and any possible services in that area that farriers might provide, creating an "either/or" situation for horse owners.

Consider this: becoming a farrier in Britain requires a four-year apprenticeship, college study, examinations, a considerable investment in tools and inventory, and ongoing compliance with occupational regulations and government doctrines. Entering barefoot trimming requires no training, college or exams, very low initial investment and overhead, and almost no government oversight unless a welfare violation charge is made. That said, many British barefoot trimmers seem interested in continuing education and advancement, perhaps moreso than average farriers, and trimmers must pay tuition for their education out of their own pockets.

Read more about how and why the survey was conducted in the Hoof Blog's article from January 2008.

© Fran Jurga and Hoofcare Publishing. No use without permission. Permissions for use elsewhere are usually easily arranged.

Fran Jurga's Hoof Blog is a between-issues news service for subscribers to Hoofcare and Lameness Journal. This blog may be read online at the blog page, checked via RSS feed, or received via a digest-type email (requires signup in box at top right of blog page).

To subscribe to Hoofcare and Lameness (the journal), please visit the main site, www.hoofcare.com, where many educational products and media related to equine lameness and hoof science can be found.

Questions or problems with this blog? Send email to blog@hoofcare.com.